\n<\/p>\n
In Mali, a country currently ruled by a cohort of pro-Russian army officers, the only way a journalist can stay alive or avoid a prison sentence is by practising \u2018sunshine journalism\u2019: praising the military junta\u2019s efforts to \u2018eradicate\u2019 terrorist groups and retake former Tuareg rebel strongholds, unify and \u2018develop\u2019 Mali, regain national sovereignty, push aside neocolonialism and vilify the West, especially the former colonial power, France. Praising the Russia-Mali partnership, as well as the newly formed Alliance of Sahel States (AES) and its other members, Niger and Burkina Faso, is also de rigueur.<\/p>\n
Questioning the war or the military government\u2019s foreign policy, calling for a return to constitutional rule, reporting on human rights abuses by the army and Wagner mercenaries, or on antiterrorist operations which end up killing civilians, must be avoided at all costs.<\/p>\n
Even criticising Mali\u2019s neighbouring juntas can land you in trouble, as Joliba TV, a popular privately owned station, found out recently. Issa Kaou N\u2019Djim, an independent political commentator, was detained<\/a> on 13 November, after alleging during a Joliba programme that a recent coup attempt in Burkina Faso was an invention of the junta. N\u2019Djim will be prosecuted for insulting a foreign head of state. Joliba\u2019s broadcasting licence was revoked and the station shut down<\/a>. In mid-December, the media regulator commuted the shutdown to a six-month suspension. \u2018We have been unwillingly turned into mouthpieces for the juntas and Russian propaganda machines,\u2019 one journalist told me as he prepared to flee the country. \u2018Working as a journalist in Mali has become a matter of life and death. If the military do not put you behind bars on trumped-up charges, the jihadist groups will track you down, kidnap or even kill you if they find out that your reporting is harming their interests.\u2019<\/p>\n In 2021, the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) raised the alarm in \u00c9tat de la libert\u00e9 de la presse au Mali<\/em><\/a>, a report that stressed the vulnerability of journalists after the second coup d\u2019\u00e9tat earlier in the year. <\/p>\n Angela Quintal, the Africa programme co-ordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), told me it isn\u2019t only foreign media outlets \u2013 mainly French \u2013 whose staff have been \u2018definitively\u2019 forbidden to work in Mali or faced suspensions.\u2018Local outlets have also been barred from distributing content made by RFI and France 24,\u2019 she said, \u2018and Mali\u2019s media regulator in April \u201cinvited all media\u201d to \u201cstop all broadcasting and publication\u201d of coverage on political parties and activities of a political nature of associations.\u2019 According to Quintal, the uptick in regulatory restrictions coincided with the arrest of Abdoul Niang in October 2023 for allegedly making false statements in an interview on the Facebook page of a local media outlet in connection with the dismissal of a separate defamation case against him. \u2018Though Niang is no longer in detention, the message that journalism can be considered a crime in Mali has been received loud and clear.\u2019 <\/p>\n And not for the first time: in 2016, Birama Tour\u00e9, a reporter for the Bamako-based investigative weekly Le Sphinx<\/em>, disappeared without trace. In 2022, after a long investigation, Reporters without Borders<\/a> concluded that he had died in a detention centre at the hands of Malian state security. <\/p>\n After Tour\u00e9\u2019s disappearance, his friend and colleague Ousmane (not his real name) stopped working as a journalist himself to become instead a fixer for foreign reporters. He would advise his clients not to carry a smartphone or press card, or anything that could identify them as a journalist to the security services: they should meet their contacts, get their story and get out of the country as soon as possible. But now that so many foreign media have been banned from Mali, Ousmane\u2019s work has dried up.<\/p>\n One of the only ways for foreign correspondents to get into Mali now is to rely on the services of human smugglers, as I did a few weeks ago. Ousmane told me there were \u2018no foreign tourists and journalists, no income for us and, with no development aid from France, most social development projects have come to a standstill\u2019. <\/p>\n I met an activist who blames the region\u2019s political instability on the West, which for years supported corrupt, nepotistic dictators so long as they promoted Western interests and maintained a fa\u00e7ade of democracy. \u2018Look at where we are now,\u2019 she said. \u2018The West\u2019s strategy has badly backfired and generated anti-Western sentiments which the juntas have capitalised on.\u2019 <\/p>\n